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If aliens contact humanity, who decides what we do next?
- tabtab 4y agoWhy trolls will decide, just like now.
- mharig 4y agoThe aliens.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoYeah who are we kidding. Any craft that can visit the Earth from outside the solar system is also capable of destroying civilization on Earth. Literally that same craft. At relativistic speeds, any sizable piece of matter can become an extinction level event.
- rolph 4y agojust travelling close to the earth would hit it with a relativistic shockwave. no classical weapons required, like using jetwash, or transsonic shock to cause extremely prejudicial complications
- chii 4y ago> a relativistic shockwave This would assume that the spaceship is emitting matter as part of it's propulsion mechanism, or it's somehow able to push matter in it's way away (rather than obliterating it). otherwise, how does shockwave from relativistic speeds happen?
- rolph 4y agodistortion of spacetime, as occurs when energetic content results in a disequilibrium energy-tensor metric. conceptual example, alcubierre warp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive very much like a boats bow/stern waves, or a jets acoustic waves, except much higher energy in a different substance.
- chii 4y ago> in a different substance but there's no such a substance in empty vacuum. If the speed was enough to generate gravitational waves somehow, and that gravitational wave is strong enough to disturb macro objects like the earth, we'd be a bit dead i suppose. The disturbances of spacetime like the alcubierre warp is still theoretical - requires things like negative energy?!
- rolph 4y agospacetime isnt empty vacuum. its a sea of 0 sums that periodically dissociate, into tangible matter. the negative energy requirement was probably a fast and lose statement, its looking more like ...negative for us, energy is required. casimir plate devices and soliton wave functions are the newest idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton
- blmayer 4y ago18 paragraphs to finally get the answer on a 2 line sentence.
- birdymcbird 4y agoInteresting bit: > “The bigger concern is to establish some form of international agreement to prevent capable individuals or private corporations from responding independently — before a consensus has formed on whether it is safe to respond at all, and what we would want to say as one planet,” he said.” agree article is mostly clickbait. these guardian writers appear to get paid per article or per paragraph anyway if first concept topic fascinates you or anyone else reading this, i suggest you read the “three body problem” by liu cixin. you in for real treat ;)
- moloch-hai 4y agoWho is "we"?
- dpratt 4y ago> “The bigger concern is to establish some form of international agreement to prevent capable individuals or private corporations from responding independently — before a consensus has formed on whether it is safe to respond at all, and what we would want to say as one planet,” he said.” This is a long winded way of saying “we don’t like competition, and allowing somebody that’s not us to do this could threaten our perceived legitimacy, therefore it must be suppressed at all costs.”
- warpspin 4y agoDavid Tennant, of course.
- LunarAurora 4y agoIn the age of fake news and deep fakes, What exactly is "aliens contacting humanity" ? Even official mass coverage could be easily rebranded as a "Hoax". Alien Mothership over NYC ? No folks, it was just a hologram.
- klyrs 4y agoChatGPT is trained on the output of all of humanity, ergo, it's best-suited to speak for all of us. Hopefully they'll read its drivel and decide we're uninteresting and move on... Poe's law strikes again, even I can't tell if the above is sarcasm.
- opwieurposiu 4y agoBy the time the politicians finish deciding which font to use in the word doc, some ham radio operator will have already exchanged QSL cards.
- wrp 4y agoThere would be a multitude of discordant responses to alien contact. Think of all the eccentric tech billionaires, fringe social groups, and isolated national regimes who would feel impelled to pursue their own vision of how contact should proceed.
- ldx1024 4y agoAny alien civilization capable of posing a physical threat to us probably will not recognize a significant distinction between us and say maggots. Better start worrying about coordinating our response with the maggot response...
- chii 4y agoWe recognize that animals have varying levels of intelligence. Why wouldn't an advanced, space faring civilization distinguish between us and maggots the way we distinguish between fish and dolphins? It's more likely that they don't distinguish if they visit, because they're not here to study or make contact, but to extract resources or remove the solar system out of the way. Not too dissimilar to how clearing the amazon forest. There's no need to ask the native animals living in the forest for permission to clear it.
- ldx1024 4y agoWell, the distance between human intelligence and dolphin intelligence is less than the distance between dolphin intelligence and fish intelligence. A more appropriate question would be why wouldn't an advanced, space faring civilization distinguish between us and maggots the way we distinguish between maggots and worms? Completely in agreement with the second paragraph.